


The Prank

by G_chan7



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry, Bottom Draco, Crime Fighting, International Magical Cooperation employee Draco, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Virgin Draco, hard working Draco, prank war between Ron and Draco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-03-08 15:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3214109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/G_chan7/pseuds/G_chan7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malfoy's a real ass, we all know that. He just gets what he deserves when Ron and Harry decide to pull a very... unconventional prank on him. Harry's not so sure though, because, Merlin knows why,somewhere in the way he actually starts feeling something for the git. First fanfiction in this fandom! SLASH H/D rated M for language and future adult situations. (ALSO ON FF.NET)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first attempt at a multichapter fanfiction ever. I started it in 2012 on ff.net under an almost identical pen name but I have yet to finish it (maybe because I'm lazy, maybe because the few reviews I got weren't enough to motivate me... who knows?). I am now reposting it here on AO3, hoping you will enjoy it :)  
> For any questions (or if you want to tell me to go to hell because it takes me too long to update) you can find me on tumblr http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/

Prologue

 

“Draco! Draco!”  
Harry had been knocking on the hard, polished mahogany door for almost ten minutes now and his knuckles were starting to protest. “Open this door, dammit! At least let me explain! … Fuck.”  
“Language, Mr. Potter”  
Oh. How could he have forgotten her? Of course Narcissa was still standing there, maybe wondering why exactly Harry Potter, of all people, was in her house and currently trying to pull down the door of her son’s bedroom. 

When she spoke again her voice was, of course, extremely polite, but just as cold and threatening as her husband’s had been. “Mr. Potter, could you please explain why my son yesterday came home in tears, in the middle of the night?”  
“How can you know he was in tears? You said it yourself: it was the middle of the night!”he remarked.  
“Many middle-aged women suffer from insomnia, especially if they have seen and lived through what I have.” Then, softly, almost in a whisper, she added “I had not seen him cry since the end of the war…” 

Harry sighed. This was going to be difficult. Finally he nodded.  
“Okay, I’ll tell you everything, but we should talk somewhere more… private, I believe.”  
She raised a single, unbelieving, eyebrow, in the same way he had seen Draco do so many times… Draco…  
“All right” she said, snapping him out of his reverie “Please, follow me”.

And follow he did, watching as the mother of his… lover? Friend? Fuck-buddy? Arch-enemy? -‘Draco’ he thought ‘just Draco’ - led him through a magnificent candle-lit corridor (after all, could anything less than magnificent be worthy of Malfoy Manor?) to a refined, cosy little parlour, where she sat gracefully on one of the cream-colored armchairs.  
“Please, Mr. Potter, take a seat” she said, seeing as he had not moved from the threshold. 

A little depressed, Harry walked forwards and plopped down on the small couch beside her chair.  
“So... is there something in particular you want to know?”  
She just kept on observing him, in silence, frowning slightly.  
“I guess I’ll just start from the beginning then ... but you must promise me” he added quickly “that you won’t skin me alive in the middle of my tale and that you’ll let me get to the end safely, at least”.  
He smirked, a little flushed.  
“You should know better than that, Mr. Potter” Narcissa said smiling in a dangerous, yet somehow motherly manner. “I would never do something as unrefined as skinning someone alive”  
“Yeah, poison would be more your style, wouldn’t it?” Harry whispered, thinking aloud.  
“Excuse me?” But, despite the threatening tone of her voice, this time she looked sincerely amused.  
“Never mind! Let’s get to the story... well... it all began more or less a month ago, at the Ministry...”


	2. Just a Prank

Chapter 1.

More or less a month ago, Ministry of Magic.

Ronald Weasley, 25, Auror, slammed open the door of the office he shared with Harry Potter, his partner and best friend, trembling with rage and shouting “The bloody little fucker!”

“Whoa! Chill, mate! What happened?” asked Harry, standing up from his chair and cautiously approaching him.

“You want to know what happened? Look at these” and, after saying that, Ron showed him what the other man had previously mistaken for a bunch of bright pink rags and which were, in fact, his Auror robes.  
He really, really tried to restrain himself but he failed miserably, a deep laughter exploding in the room.

“Yeah, laugh, you backstabbing wanker!” exclaimed the ginger, grinning. “Any bets on who did this?”  
“No need to. George’s last visit was over a week ago, so it can’t be him... let me guess... Malfoy?”Ron groaned, nodding. “The bloody little fucker!”  
“You’ve said this already, Ron” Harry smirked.  
“Nah, did I?”  
“Yup. So, what did you do to make him believe that your wardrobe needed some... modernizing?”

The young man shrugged, looking innocent. “Well... it’s Malfoy. He’s a childish, pratty, jerk, you know he is.”

“So he just turned you robes” Harry laughed again “pink for no reason?”  
“You know, there could actually be a reason. But, bloody hell, if it was some kind of comeback for that then the guy’s really twisted!”  
“Enlighten me?”  
“Oh, well...” Ron threw the pink robes on his chair and sat on the desk. “You know that briefing I attended this morning about those new drugs coming from South Africa?”

Harry nodded. It was the one he had to skip because of the massive load of paperwork that he and his partner were always too lazy to do and which, that day, had threatened to swallow him whole.

Three weeks before four people had been found dead in an apartment in Wizarding London; the cause of the death was no spell known of and the victims did not have any wounds or bruises. So what had killed them? The answer arrived a few days later, along with two other corpses: a new wizarding drug. It was a mix of elixir to induce euphoria, strong invigoration draught, magic booster and painkilling potion; moreover, it was spiked with the essence of a south African medicinal plant, the sutherlandia frutescens, a powerful tonic, which, though, had done nothing to prevent the heart attack all the victims had died from, but had helped the Aurors to find a lead: for now the contacts with the South African Ministry and the lists of import-export were all they had.

So, as soon as the mystery substance was discovered, the Minister had decided to create a task-force of Aurors, International Magical Cooperation employees and potion experts, to find the dealers and stop its spread in England once and for all.  
That day’s meeting, updating them on the investigation South African Aurors were running, had been in the main office of the International Magical Cooperation Department, where, since a few years before, Malfoy had been working as an employee.

“And when I came in” continued Ron “I was a little late and there were no chairs left so I decided to sit on a desk – lots of people were doing it! – and I happened to sit on the ferret’s desk... then I took my robes off – it was blazing hot! The little shit must have been angry because I forgot them there so he charmed them and threw’ em in a bin. Really, that’s just immature!”

Harry nodded. It sounded so absurd but at the same time so... Malfoy, though, that he had no trouble believing it. He shrugged. “That’s what he’s like, mate. What can we do, change him? No way. Just let him be, he’ll get tired and stop eventually...” Even though, after three years of working in the same building as them he still hadn’t gotten bored of the pranks he and Ron were continuously pulling on each other.

Ron’s eyes, far from being resigned, were gleaming mischievously. “We could make him pay... I need you though.” He said.

“What do you mean?”  
“Nothing really bad, of course, just a prank, no one would even know!”

Harry smirked. It’d be fun and just like being at Hogwarts again.  
“Elaborate”.  
“You still fancy blokes, right?”

Ah. That. A couple of years ago Harry had realized something that unsettled him, which was probably why he felt he wasn’t completely satisfied with his life. A little fearful, he had (as gently as possible) broken up with Ginny and he had told her and his friends that he liked males. His ex-girlfriend was sad, of course, but didn’t go into hysterics as he had anticipated: she just got up to him and asked, with tears in her eyes, if he really couldn’t love her. He said yes.  
Overall, his friends’ reactions hadn’t been bad at all, despite the initial surprise. Since that day, though, Ron and Hermione had been so supportive of his choice that they tried to set him up with literally so many people he couldn’t even count. The question the other had asked was a sign he couldn’t miss anymore.

“Positive” he said. Then laughing he added. “You’re not trying to set me up with the ferret, are you?”

Ron snorted. “Merlin, mate, of course not! Wait... I mean, yes, I am!”

“What?!” Ok, now Harry was creeped out.  
“I mean, I am but not for real!” the ginger said, with the same ‘isn’t this obvious?’ look that his wife, Hermione, had when she knew something they didn’t.  
“Oookay, I’m afraid I’m not following you anymore.”

His best friend stood up from the desk and started pacing around the messy office.

“You see, I know for sure that Malfoy likes men too and...”  
“Do you? And what do I have to do with it?”

Ron looked piqued. “Could you at least let me finish? As for knowing he is gay... honestly, have you seen the guy? Anyway, he’s always alone, either because he is a total prick (which, by the way I’m sure he is)” Harry chuckled “or because people still have reservations about the fact that he was a Death Eater but still he didn’t get punished because of a certain hero...” and he looked pointedly at the other man. “What matters is he could use some company”.

“So what do you suggest I do?” asked Harry, now genuinely interested.  
“Well you could... get to know him, go out with him... and once he likes you, you dump him and we tease him for like... ever!”

Harry glanced at him disbelievingly.

“What?!” said Ron, his ears getting a bright shade of red. “I got the idea from a Muggle movie ‘Mione forced me to watch...”  
“And, let me guess, did those two end up together in the end?”  
“Yeah, but you won’t, right?”

Harry looked uncertain. “Isn’t that a tad too cruel?”

“Harry! Think about all the shit he put us through!”

So he did. He thought of all the times the git had put them in troubles, or made him and his friends feel inferior... “Okay, I’ll do it. But there’s not a chance he’s even letting me near him, you know that?”

“No problem. I’ll ask George if he can give me some of the love potion they sell at the shop...”  
“Love Potion?! No, Ron, I’m not going do it that way!” the other said.  
“Oh, well... it’s not really love potion, you know?” Ron added quickly. “It just makes people somewhat more... compliant. He won’t jump you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Eeew. I just got a mental image I really didn’t want to see.”

Harry still looked dubious. “I don’t know, mate...”  
“Oh, come on! Do it for me! I’m your best friend! It’s just a prank and he’s not even that bad looking, is he?”

Harry sighed. ‘Not that bad looking’ he thought. ‘The understatement of the year. The guy’s gorgeous... but he’s such an ass!’

“Ok” he said. “but not a word to Hermione, alright? She’d kill us if she found out...”

Ron smirked. “Leave it to me”.


	3. Conversations

Chapter 2

_Two days later, around noon…_

“Come on, George, I’m your brother!”

Ron had been alternatively shouting and begging for the best part of an hour. As soon as he’d had a couple of free hours, he went to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes in Diagon Alley to get from his brother the only thing he and Harry still needed to put their plan into action: the love potion. So, he had strolled casually into the shop, entered the door of the staff’s office, where his sibling was working on some paperwork, and asked him for some: the look on the older man’s face was priceless.

When he recovered from the initial surprise, he smirked and said: “Anything I should know, little brother? Problems with your wife? Because that is certainly not the best way to reso-”  
“It’s not for ‘Mione” the younger Weasley answered. The other’s eyes were, by now, as wide as saucers.  
“Are you having an affair with another woman?” he asked, worried.  
“No, gosh, it’s for Harry!”  
“WHAT?!?”

After George’s yell, Ron realized that he better explain his plan to his brother, before he passed out from shock; so he promptly did. Despite the twin’s reputation for being a prankster, though, he flatly refused: not because it was Malfoy (Merlin knew the little prat deserved it!) but because love, he had learned, of any kind, should always be a source of joy, and it was not supposed to be exploited to hurt someone, no matter how much of a jerk that person was. So his little brother had seemed to decide to annoy the hell out of him until he complied.

He would have probably endured it all if Ron hadn’t suddenly shouted “You know, Fred would have gone with it, he would have found it funny and you would have too, before he died!”

George visibly darkened and stopped moving his papers around, to give his little brother a look half-way between anguished and dangerous. It was when his face suddenly became a mask devoid of all emotion that the younger man understood that mentioning the dead twin (and for such a trivial matter) had been a very bad idea.

“I’m so sorr-”  
“Don’t” said the other, in a low voice, interrupting him. “Just don’t. You stay here, I’m going down in the basement and fetch the damn thing for you. I’ll even put it into a different vial, so no one will understand what it is. Then get the fuck out.”

He stormed outside, without giving Ron the time to say anything, and made his way through the crowded, colorful shop, the one he and his brother had invented and made famous.

‘So many laughing faces…’ he thought ‘Isn’t this why we started our business, to make people laugh? And now I should use this stuff to help them hurting that poor bloke?’

“Hey, George!” called his friend (and, lately, employee) Lee Jordan, from behind the counter. “You going in the basement? Could you take a box of trick wands, please? We’re running out of ‘em!”

‘Trick…’ He smiled. “Of course, Lee!”

He sped up and entered the basement; he localized a simple, empty vial, uncorked it and, waving his wand, he said “Aguamenti!” Then, a little happier, he started looking for a box of trick wands.

* * *

Ron was staring at a picture of the Weasley family before the war, hanging on the wall opposite the desk, when he heard the door opening and turned around to look at his brother with a pained expression. “George, really, I’m so sorry” he said “I shouldn’t have said that, I know, I was a jerk... forgive me?”

George smiled and hugged him. “I managed to scare you off, then? Fred would have found this funny!” he answered with a laugh, his voice wavering a bit. The younger pulled away to look at him in the eye. “So we’re okay?”

“Yeah. Here, take your stuff. Use it carefully, though, ‘cause I won’t give you a drop more. It’s transparent and it has no taste nor smell. It’s quite easy to slip it into someone’s drink, actually…”  
Ron smirked. “Thanks, bro! See you, then!”

After he’d exited the office, the twin looked at the picture on the wall too. “Looks like we tricked him once again, eh, Freddie?”

_Meanwhile, at the Ministry…_

Harry was hungry. He’d been researching on ex Death Eaters and various criminals for hours, but no one seemed to correspond to the profiles of the dealers nor had ties with South African economy… While he waited for Ron to return from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, he decided to go to the cafeteria, on the first level, to eat something. After a short walk through the Ministry’s corridors, he entered the crowded elevator, with the occasional ‘good afternoon’ to the people he knew, answered by enthusiastic ‘hello Harry’s and ‘good afternoon Auror Potter’s, and reached his destination.

The cafeteria was a magically enlarged room that could accommodate almost all the employees at once: it was very large, airy and well lit by many enchanted windows. The tables, unlike Hogwarts’ great hall, were many and had, seemingly, no order; almost all the people, though, tended to stick with those who worked in the same department as them, creating vast ‘Auror zones’, ‘Magical transportation zones’ and such. At times it happened that someone decided to eat alone, so there was also an area full of little tables, taken up by only one wizard or witch. In that area, sitting alone with a big dossier in one hand, a cup of tea in the other, was Malfoy. When Harry saw the platinum blonde head, he was uncertain. Ron had not come back so he had no potion yet and it was unlikely he could approach the other. At last he thought: ‘It’s an occasion to try and get close to him without magic involved… if he turns me down I can still wait for Ron and follow the plan.’

So, as swiftly as possible, he grabbed a tray and filled it with roast beef and mashed potatoes (he accurately avoided the plate of broccoli) and made a beeline for the ferret’s table.

He stopped right in front of it still unsure about what to say. What could someone say a guy they’d spent more than a half of their life bickering with?

“Hi…Uhm… is that chair vacant?” he finally asked, with a forced little smile.

Malfoy, not even raising his eyes from the dossier he was attentively reading, answered with his usual, drawling voice: “I really don’t understand, Potter, if you’re being delirious and you’re actually seeing someone taking it up or if your eyesight is so bad you can’t see it for yourself.”

“I was trying to be polite, you prat!”  
“Well” he sneered “you just sounded stupid.” Then he looked around and frowned. “There are a lot of vacant tables around, Scarhead, why would you want to sit here with me?”  
“I thought you looked lonely.”

The blonde, who had moved his gaze back to the files in his hand, looked up at him with wide eyes and a slightly agape mouth. When he had schooled his features back to an expressionless mask, he asked: “Come again?”  
“I said that I thought you looked lonely.” Harry repeated, smiling.

Malfoy, now, just seemed suspicious. “What’s it to you? Why don’t you go eating with your Weasel instead of bothering me?”  
“Ron’s not here right now.”  
“I see. Quick visit to brain-girl?”  
“Don’t call her names! Now, can I sit here or not?”  
“No.”

Prat. “Well, this stuff is heavy” Harry said, pointing at his food “so I’m sitting anyway.” He put his tray on the small table and sat down, staring at the glaring blond, who, by now, looked definitely pissed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Draco hissed.  
“Nothing, actually. What about you? Has something happened or do you always have that stick up your ass?”  
“You know what?” the other said, threateningly “I didn’t want you to sit there, because I knew you’d start getting on my nerves. And as you can see” he continued, showing Harry his paperwork “I was trying to work. Because, guess what? Not everyone is the bloody Boy-Who-Lived-To-Make-My-Life-Hell: some of us actually have everything to prove!”  
“Hey, I just asked you if I could eat at your table! It’s you who started being a jerk and now you’re whining, just as you always do!” the brunette almost shouted. Fortunately the room was noisy.

“Then you could do what everyone else has already done and fuck the hell off!” And, with that, he gathered his things and stormed off towards the elevators.

It was only after he’d already gone, that Harry processed the blonde’s last words and realized just how utterly, terribly alone Draco Malfoy felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight angst (especially the George/Ron/Fred part) but the characters just asked me to write this chapter like this! ;) I’ve tried to keep them all as in character as possible (George came out a little softer than I wanted him to, but, knowing that he has lost a brother, someone whom he loved very much, it’s still understandable that he doesn’t want people to suffer. Draco, instead… well a Malfoy who actually works in the first place? He must be pretty anxious about his job and I don’t really see him going out with people much after the war…), but I’m not sure of the result. Let me know what you think!


	4. Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's chapter three! As reviewer Keikey made me notice, AO3 had canceled all of my formatting for chapter one and two, sorry if it disturbed your reading! Anyway, I fixed the problem and edited them both. Let me know what you think ;)

Chapter 3

_Later, same day…_

Ron entered the office he shared with Harry only to find it empty. On his desk a note said: _“Grabbing something for lunch in the cafeteria. Back in ten minutes. Harry.”_

So, while waiting for his best friend to return, he started to go through some of the files at hand, personal dossiers of previous offenders, trying to find a connection between them and the spread of the new drug. Most of them were, of course, former Death Eaters on the run, like Crabbe senior and both Goyles. _‘Those guys’_ he thought _‘will never learn’_. Few of them, actually, had surrendered right after the final battle, seven years prior, and he still couldn’t believe that Lucius Malfoy had been one of the firsts; maybe ol’ Lucius had understood his mistakes, maybe he just did it to cleanse his family’s name… anyway the results of this gesture had been not only a partial return of the Malfoys’ respectability but also his premature death in Azkaban, under _‘mysterious circumstances’_ , shortly after his son had started to work at the ministry. “Which is kind of lucky, if you ask me” Ron had said to Harry, when news of it had appeared on the Prophet. “I know it’s an awful thing to say, but the bastard tried to kill Ginny! And even if he hadn’t imagine how much more ‘My father will hear about this’ or ‘My father thinks’ we could have had to endure!”

A soft clicking noise caused the young man’s attention to shift towards the door from which his partner had just entered the room, making his way through the mess that covered desks, floor and any available surface.

“Finally you’re back!” Harry said “You’ve been gone for ages!”

“Sorry, mate” the other replied “George was being difficult, but… guess what? I got it!” he grinned.

“Good. I just found out we’ll really, really be needing it...”

“What do you mean?”

Harry started to describe, all the while nibbling on his bottom lip, his previous encounter with Malfoy: how he had approached him to try and work things out without using the potion and, more or less, how the prat had rejected him. For some unknown reason he didn’t tell Ron how tense and sullen the other man had looked: he still felt uneasy just thinking about it, almost as if he had assisted to an unusual display of humanity he wasn’t meant to –and didn’t want to- see. _‘He’s still… just Malfoy, right?”_

When he stopped talking, Ron gave him a sympathetic slap on the shoulder and said “The stupid git… now we have the potion to make him pay, though! Unfortunately we have just one vial –George told me he wouldn’t give me a drop more- so we’ll have to rely on your…” he snorted “personal charms soon.”

Harry mock-punched his arm with an indignant “Hey!” and they both ended up laughing like mad.

“So” continued the redhead, after his chuckles subsided, drying the little tears that had formed in the corners of his eyes from laughing too much “you think you can do it?”

The other man sighed. “Of course I can. Even if my being Harry Potter won’t work with him I’m still one of the most wanted bachelors around and he’s a vain shallow guy, right? He’ll fall for me in less than two weeks… shouldn’t be all that difficult dealing with him.” Who knows why, then, his mind kept saying it would be all but easy?

“It’s all right. Plan’s officially started. Now help me with these” Ron said, pointing at the dossiers scattered around his desk “there’s loads of them and my mind keeps slipping somewhere else every five minutes.”

“Ok.”

The silence, barely broken by the scratches of quills on paper and pages being turned, lasted no more than ten minutes before the ginger said “Hey, it’s Friday today! You’re coming for dinner with ‘Mione and I, aren’t you?”

* * *

 

_Three days later, around noon._

Harry and Ron stepped out of the conference room of Magical Law Enforcement frustrated and definitely hungry.

“I’m starting to think we’ll never catch those guys…” said Ron, looking slightly defeated “We’ve been looking anywhere but we have no leads at all! The only unusual component of the drug is the damn suthernalia plant…”

“Sutherlandia” corrected Harry, only half-listening to his friend’s rant.

“What?”

“The plant’s name is _sutherlandia frutescens_ , it grows in South Africa and is a cardio-tonic” he recited diligently. Then, using his most convincing imitation of Hermione’s voice he added “Honestly, Ronald! Robards mentioned it in a meeting _ages_ ago!”

The redhead chuckled. “Yeah, yeah I knew that… let’s go grab something to eat at the cafeteria, I’m famished!”

Chattering the two men entered an extremely crowded elevator, whose doors barely closed pressing all the people inside one against the other. As soon as they arrived at the eighth level and the cold female voice announced “Level 8: Atrium, Cafeteria”, Harry was suddenly thrust aside and squashed against a wall by a horde of ministry employees. In front of them, leading the group, he saw the one who had probably shoved him first: a young wizard almost as tall as he was, clad in smart-looking, dark-grey robes, with hair so blond it could be mistaken for white. He nudged Ron with the elbow and whispered “Malfoy’s there!”

“Great! Let’s follow him!”

Just as they had anticipated the blond was headed towards the cafeteria. Ron, putting a hand on his best friends shoulder, stopped him before he could enter and stayed on the threshold. Harry, at first, just stared at his friend, a mute question showing on his face, until realization dawned upon him. “Right…” he said. Then, lowering his voice he asked “The potion… do you have it with you?”

The other smirked mischievously. “Yep. But if there’s something living with Hermione taught me is that, before doing anything, you always gotta have a good plan.”

Harry looked over his shoulder: Malfoy was standing in line for a cup of coffee. “Okay” he replied “But, if he leaves, all the planning will be for nothing. So let’s be quick.”

“Mmm” Ron mumbled “How can we distract him enough that he won’t see one of us pouring the stuff in his coffee?”

‘Distract him, uh?’ “I know! The cloak, my Invisibility Cloak!”  

Being an Auror was a dangerous job: you could never know for sure when they would send you in the field and if you would need a quick escape route. That’s why Harry had started to always carry it with him -even at the Ministry- just like Dumbledore had suggested nine years before.

“You’re a genius!” Ron exclaimed. After thinking about it for a few seconds, though, he added. “Actually, you’re not. It took you ages to come up with that, mate, and you’re always carrying it around! Which is… kind of paranoid, anyway… it’s good you have it now.”

“Told you it’s useful. So, I put it on and just... do it?”

“Nope. You stalked him for a whole year, back at Hogwarts... he could notice. I can... I don’t know... bump into him or something. You can bet the prick will make a scene and you’ll have a free hand.” He smiled.

“Okay. Let’s.” Harry said and, after looking around to make sure no one would see, he took the cloak out of the inner pocket of his Auror robes and vanished underneath it.

Trying his best not to thread on anyone’s feet, he followed Ron through the bright room full of chattering people towards the counter, where Malfoy, last in the queue, Styrofoam cup in one hand, wallet in the other, was about to pay. The ginger quickly grabbed a couple of sandwiches, then, seemingly thinking that bumping against him would have made the other wizard spill his coffee – since he was definitely taller and broader- he simply, nonchalantly, walked past him (all the while pointing at the blond’s back to tell Harry to wait there) and showed the sandwiches to the old lady at the cash register.

Malfoy’s eyes were wide in outrage. “Excuse me?!” he said, dangerously.

While Ron turned deliberately slowly and asked “What’s up, ferret?” Harry uncorked the vial containing the potion and poured some in the cup.

“You know exactly what’s wrong, Weasel! You jumped the damn queue!”

“Well don’t think I don’t know what you did the other day with my robes, you git!”

The invisible wizard shifted towards his best friend and tapped his shoulder to make him understand it was time to retreat.

“If you hadn’t been such a careless, disrespectful oaf-”

“Whatever” the other retorted, interrupting him. The elderly witch at the counter was staring at them, worried, without uttering a word.

Ron handed her three Sickles with a smile and a “Have a good day, Lillian”, then turned and walked away, leaving an irritated Malfoy behind. Harry followed him towards the elevators and got the cloak off.

“Mission complete” he said, winking.

“Good, mate. I’ll go eat upstairs. He’s all yours” the redhead replied, then entered the elevator and pushed the ‘up’ button.

 

 

 


	5. You're a genius, Potter!

Chapter 4

Harry entered the cafeteria again and spotted Malfoy sitting alone at the same table he’d taken three days before. He was holding his cup of coffee in one hand, while he turned the pages of a voluminous dossier Harry hadn’t seen ten minutes prior with the other.

The Auror grabbed a tray and a portion of fish and chips then, stealing another glance at the blond to make sure he’d had at least a sip of the potion laced coffee, he headed for his table. _‘Déjà vu’_ he told himself _‘Let’s hope it won’t end as badly as last time...’_

Stopping in front of the other man, he took a deep breath, mustered all his patience and asked “Since I can see for _myself_ that this chair is vacant, could I please sit here, if I promise not to bother you?” Malfoy sighed, eyes fixed on his papers, then gestured towards the chair. “Fine” he said “Whatever.”  
Harry sat, with a barely suppressed grin, and slowly started to eat: attempting to strike up a conversation would just piss the other off... he decided that he’d better wait, Malfoy’s curiosity would have the better of him, eventually. Of course he was proved right merely minutes later.

“So” the blond started, still without looking at him “why are you here with me and not with your Wease- Wait. Merlin, have you used a time turner? This conversation sounds too much like the last one we had.”

Harry laughed. “There are no time turners anymore” he explained “we broke them all when we were attacked by the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries, back in fifth year.” He decided to keep the _‘If I remember correctly your father was there too!’_ for himself. Wouldn’t be the best thing to say to win Malfoy over, really. “And, to answer your first question, I wanted to eat with Ron, but he just left, muttering something about you being a prat.”

This caused Malfoy to finally look at him, halfway between shocked and outraged. “What?! _He_ is the prat! I’d been in a queue for ten minutes and he just walked past me as if I weren’t even there!”  
“Mmm” hummed the young Auror. He took a bite of his fish and then he added “So maybe you’re not to blame, after all... maybe he was just having a bad day.”  
“Damn right he was!”  
“Well... I apologize in his place, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

Malfoy looked at him disbelievingly, raising a single, blond eyebrow, as if uncertain if he was being made fun of or if the other had _finally_ lost his mind.

“What?” Harry asked “I don’t want to fight with you anymore! I mean, what are we, still sixteen? Last time too... I came here just because I wanted some company that doesn’t drool all over me because I’m Harry Potter and you looked... lonely...” The potion was definitely taking effect. Was the pink hue on Draco Malfoy’s cheeks a blush? “... and somewhat brooding. Are you always working during your lunch break or is it a special occasion?”

The blond wizard let out an exasperated, yet amused, sigh. “So you’re not pretending. You really _are_ this dense, aren’t you?” Harry sent him a mock glare: after knowing him for so long, he could tell –and he was pleased to do so- that his tone was more teasing than actually mean. “Would you be so gracious as to tell me why would I be so terribly dense?”  
“We are on the same special task force, Gryffindork! Why do you think I’m working so hard?”  
“Ah, yeah...” _‘Real smooth Harry’_ “so... you in International Magical Cooperation have any leads?”

Malfoy shrugged, gesturing towards his dossier. “I’ve been on import registers for more than a week and I’ve not found anything yet. It’s frustrating! I know just about anything that’s been imported by Portkey, Floo and any other magical method, but I still haven’t found anything worth mentioning. The ingredients are fairly standard... the only one which stands out is the Sutherlandia Frutescens but no one has ordered it recently...”

His eyes came back to his register, while Harry stared at his face. He was frowning in concentration and looking pensive and the black haired wizard thought that look suited him a lot; it was almost... endearing. Maybe there was more to Draco Malfoy than his bastard attitude, icy cold exterior and handsome figure _‘and those striking eyes and those pouty lips...’_

He managed to get out of his reverie just when he heard an annoyed voice saying “Earth to Potter!”  
 _‘Busted.’_  
“Sorry, I was ...”  
“Staring.”  
“No. I mean, not intentionally. I was... a little... never mind.”

Malfoy, once again, looked at him as if he was sure he’d be going mad and starting to sing Celestina Warbeck’s songs stark naked soon.

“All right. I just asked you if you could think of a reason we’re not finding anything.”  
“Oh.” Harry replied, running a hand through his already messy hair. “I really don’t know. It’s not like Muggle import-export registers that can easily be modified or not kept at all... Muggle criminals have many ways of eluding control, but I can’t imagine how a wizard could...”

The other’s face brightened immediately and his hand shot to cover Harry’s, squeezing it. “You’re a genius Potter!”  
“Am I?”  
“Yes! Muggles!” Malfoy said, quickly finishing his coffee and gathering his things “How could _I_ not think about it!”

He stood up and headed for the elevators, while Harry shouted playfully after him “Wasn’t I the most dreadfully dense person you’ve ever met?”

Malfoy – Draco – smiled. A real smile, not his usual mocking grin or sneer. And it was beautiful. ‘ _There is_ definitely _magic involved here’_.

“I take it back Potter!”

When Harry came back in his office and was greeted by Ron he was still feeling a little giddy. Not only had he been successful with Malfoy –he’d held his hand for Merlin’s sake! Just for a second and... because Harry had helped him doing his beloved job, but he’d held it anyway!- but more importantly because...

“We’ve got something, I think!”

Ron, who was still munching on his sandwiches, said something that sounded much like the cry of some enraged animal. Then after seeing the look of confusion on his best friend’s face, clarified “Already? Is he that easy?”  
“No” the other replied “We don’t have something in _that_ sense! It’s about the case!”  
“About the case?” the ginger asked “You talked about work?”  
“At least we talked and we didn’t scream at each other. We think the South African plant came through Muggle transportation, that’s why we couldn’t trace it.”Ron frowned contemplatively. “That makes sense, mate. Maybe we’ll be able to find them now!”  
Harry nodded. “I was thinking of talking with Robards. The meetings we have twice a week are not enough: the departments need to be more in contact with each other. I’ll suggest that we work in pairs or something.”

Then it was his friend’s time to smirk. “And I think I know exactly what partner you’ll ask for. This way we’ll be able to keep on both the case and the plan! What’s easier than falling in love while being together every day, looking for criminals? Harry, mate, you’re a genius!”

Harry smiled. He realized, though, that that word -“genius”- spoken by Ron, didn’t even remotely make his stomach flip like it had when Malfoy had said it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on tumblr! http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/


	6. A family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay - not even going to bore you with my many many problems.   
> Enjoy!

Chapter 5

_Later, same day..._

“… And that is why I think we should work more in contact with the other guys in the task force. All right, maybe not in large groups, that would probably just create more chaos…” Harry was saying, after having cornered Robards, the Head Auror, in a corridor.

“What do you mean Potter?”

“Well, for one even just assigning tasks would be a problem, communication and teamwork would end up being messy or would take too much time to organize and…”

“Ok, I understand, go on.”

“I think working with the Potion experts would be a waste of time too, since we probably wouldn’t understand a word they’re saying: they’re entirely on another level.” Seeing Robards nod, serious, the younger wizard added “The best option would be working in couples made up of an Auror and an International Magical Cooperation employee: Malfoy and I managed to get a potentially essential lead in a matter of minutes, which means there wasn’t enough contact between the departments from the beginning. Besides, we could have meetings three times a week to discuss what every couple has been up to and any news coming from the Potion Masters.”

Robards scratched his chin, immersed in thoughts, then replied “It’s a great idea, Potter, we’re starting tomorrow. You may go home for today.”

Harry smiled and braced himself for his exploit: the first part of the plan, convincing his boss to accept his proposal, had gone smoothly. His next move would be crucial. He made a show of walking away, then he turned back towards the Head Auror and asked “Sir? I was wondering if I could be paired with Draco Malfoy.”

The older man stared at him interrogatively. “Why? I was under the impression that you two didn’t like each other.”

“Uh… we don’t. Or at least we didn’t at Hogwarts, but we’ve grown up and we’ve both changed a lot since then, so cooperation shouldn’t be impossible… and despite any dislike we may feel, we work well together: he’s got a quick mind, but I’m better at investigating. I think we kind of complement each other.”

The Head Auror smirked arrogantly. “Of course you’re better at investigating, you're an Auror and that office’s usual tasks are setting standards for cauldron thickness and shite like that!”

Harry chuckled. “Then, is it settled?”

“All right, Potter.” said Robards, turning to walk away “But if I find you two bickering, turning your robes pink and such absurdities I’m putting you off the case!”

* * *

As soon as Harry had apparated on the landing that lead to his apartment, he sensed something was off. The newest wards he had put on his house alerted him, with a tugging sensation in his belly and a light blue shimmering around the front door, that someone was inside. More and more cautious, wondering just _who_ would wait for him in his flat, he tightened his hold on his wand and took out his keys.

He’d barely made a step, when his door suddenly opened, a bushy haired _something_ bolted out of it and he found himself with his arms very full of one Hermione Granger. The shocked silence lasted about thirty seconds, barely enough for Harry to register the soft warmth of his childhood friend’s body against his; then, detaching himself from her embrace, he snapped. “Hermione, are you barking _mad_? I’m an Auror, I could’ve killed you! Didn’t you think it would be best if you had told me you’d visit?”

The woman gasped, surprised. Harry saw her slightly flushed face and her glistening eyes and immediately regretted his outburst. Funny how, after more than fourteen years, Hermione could still make him feel as guilty as a schoolboy who hadn’t done homework for his favourite teacher. In a second, the tight grip he still had on her shoulder became a comforting squeeze. “Sorry for shouting, you just scared me, that’s all. And yes, I know I’m a paranoid wanker, you don’t need to tell me” he said with a smirk.

Hermione grimaced at the cursing, then took a deep breath. “No, you’re right” she replied. “I should have owled you first, but I really needed to talk to you.”

“’Mione, is everything okay?” Harry asked, worried.

“Yes, yes, just… let’s get inside, mh?”

The two made their way into the Auror’s apartment, and sat down on the worn but comfortable brown couch in the living room, while Harry spelled the tray on the glass coffee table in front of it to bring drinks and refreshments. Hermione took another deep breath and gulped down unceremoniously a glass of pumpkin juice; then she said “Harry, this may come as a bit of a shock… I mean, it shocked _me_ and I should have certainly been the first to notice, wouldn’t I…”

“Mione, you’re babbling.” She tended to that quite often, when she was nervous, he’d noticed. _‘Merlin’_ he thought _‘what if something is really wrong?’_ He had but started to conjure up catastrophic scenarios, when the woman said with a tremulous voice “Harry, I’m pregnant.”

“I’m sorry, _what_?”

If his friendly attitude and gestures of comfort hadn’t managed to get her to relax, it seemed his gaping mouth and wide eyes finally did the trick, because she burst out laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. When she finally stopped she looked much calmer and, smiling, she whispered “Ron and I are expecting a baby!”

Relief and a happiness so great he didn’t think he could have ever felt washed over Harry, who stood up abruptly and hugged his friend tightly, saying “That’s brilliant! I’m _so_ happy for you! Why didn’t Ron tell me?”

Hermione’s sheepish look told him everything he needed to know.

“Oh. He doesn’t know, does he?”

She made a tight-lipped sound. “Not yet. I just came back from my appointment at St. Mungo’s and I was so confused… You were the first person who came into my mind. I mean, I don’t know if I’m ready to be a parent and I knew Ron would just say that everything’s all right and he would be overjoyed and-”

“What do you mean? Aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. But I’m a little scared too. What if I can’t be a good mother?” she asked, nibbling on her bottom lip.

Harry sighed and let out a short chuckle. Then he replied “Hermione, I’ve known you for fourteen years and, let me tell you, I don’t know anyone who could be a better parent… after all you’ve spent all this time mothering Ron and I, how different can this be? Seriously. You’re my best friend and a brilliant witch. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

The witch smiled, a little teary. “Sorry again for the invasion, by the way. I left a note for Ron at home, telling him I would be here, so he’s going to come through any moment. I was thinking of telling him here.”

Harry laughed. “I can’t wait to see his face! So, are you two having dinner with me?”

“If you don’t have any other plans, yes.” Her eyes gleamed mischievously, much like Ron’s did. “Or maybe you do? Have you been seeing anyone lately?”

“Ehm… No?” Harry had accomplished many heroic deeds in his life. He had slayed a Basilisk, fought a dragon and killed the most powerful dark wizard of all time. However, he _still_ couldn’t lie to Hermione Granger.

She beamed. “So you have! Tell me everything: what’s his name?”

Thankfully, in that precise moment, Ron Apparated in the middle of the living room. “Hey Harry, ‘Mione!” he greeted before moving to kiss his wife. No matter how cheesy it sounded, Harry never tired of seeing his best friends slipping into ‘husband/wife’ mode. The way they looked at each other, as if they were the only one in the room, made him, bachelor since _forever_ , feel warm inside, more than if the love they shared were his.

“Well” Ron said. “Why did you call me here? The note said you had to tell me something.”

Hermione bit again her lower lip, anxiously, shooting a quick glance at Harry. Then she replied “Maybe you should sit down.” Hearing the way her voice shook Ron paled. “Is it bad? Merlin, you went to see the Healer today. Are you sick?”

The woman shook her head and her lips curled in a slow, large smile. “Ron, we’re going to have a baby.”

Ron’s eyes widened almost comically before they rolled back into his head and he fell onto Harry’s carpet with an audible ‘ _thump’._

  

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TO ANYONE with good knowledge of the english language and possibly infinite patience: I'm looking for a beta who might help me to speed things up and make them better.   
> If you want to, you can contact me here (even just to say hi!): http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/


	7. Being Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbelievably late. Unbelievably sorry. Let's leave it at that.

Chapter 6

 

_Evening, same day_

It took a while to wake Ron up. After having tried pretty much anything –from shaking him, to calling him, to slapping him- Hermione lost her patience, drew out her wand and muttered “Rennervate”. The red haired man’s eyes opened slowly and focused on his wife and best friend.

“Merlin, guys, what happened? I had the weirdest dream about Hermione telling me she was...” in that moment realization hit him it hadn’t been a dream at all and, wide eyed, he asked “’Mione, are you really...?”

She gave him a slightly tearful but enormous smile and just said “Yes.” Ron was up and fiercely hugging her in a matter of seconds and, after he started repeating the phrase “I’m gonna be a dad!” like a mantra, they both started laughing uncontrollably.

Harry watched them smiling and decided to move to the kitchen, to give them some time alone. Despite being extremely happy for them, there was still a little voice, deep inside him, who was telling him they didn’t really need him anymore. They weren’t only a great couple: now they were going to be a family. _‘Someone who loves you no matter what, whom you can share all your joys and worries with...’_ Merlin knew if he wanted that.   
His jealousy, though, was short-lived: he hadn’t moved more than two steps from the living room when two pairs of arms grabbed him and dragged him into a crushing embrace.

* * *

“So” said Hermione, quietly slurping her noodles from a steaming box of Chinese takeaway. “Who’s this man you’re dating?”

Harry’s noodles slithered right into his windpipe. “Who?” he spluttered.

“Oh, you know” she laughed “When I asked if you were seeing anyone and you said no? Well, you’re a dreadful liar. Who is he?”

Ron made a weird sound halfway between a snort and a gurgle and his best friend shot him a dark look. What if Hermione found out about Malfoy?

“Ehm... he’s just... you know... a guy” he said lamely.

The witch’s face clearly said something among the lines of _‘you don’t say’,_ so he added, “We’re not even going out, actually. There’s just this guy at work who’s very fit and I thought I could ask him out one of this days, that’s all.”

“Ok, but who is he? Do we know him?”

“I’m not telling.”

“But why?”

Ron, this time, laughed out loud. “Oh, come on ‘Mione, give the man some breath. When he’s ready to let us know, _if_ this guy is even worth it he’ll tell us, won’t you mate?”

Harry hid his surprise for how easily the redhead had deflected his wife’s attention behind a smile and a muttered “Sure”, wondering how he had become so good at avoiding her prying. He imagined that living with her must have made him Hermione-resistant.

“Alright” she said, circling Harry’s shoulders with her arm “I’ll lay off. It’s just... I’d love to see you settled, you know that?” Feeling the concern in her voice prompted Harry to return her half embrace. “I’ll find him, one day. Maybe not right now, but I will. Promise.”

After dinner was over, he said goodbye to his friends and tidied up the mess in the living room, then he went to sleep. He dreamt of “settling down” with Malfoy who, stretched out on the couch in just a pair of denims and with a ridiculously large portion of delicious looking alabaster skin exposed, ordered him in a whiny voice to iron his socks.

* * *

_A day later – 9:00 AM_

Harry got out of the fireplace in the Ministry’s Atrium and dusted off his Auror robes in a pretty good mood. Even though his sleep had not been particularly relaxing, he’d spent the evening before with his best friends, he would soon have a godchild and, he was sure, with the new mixed teams strategy they would be solving the drug case before long. Mounting the elevator and greeting colleagues until he reached the second level, he thought that nothing could really go wrong that day. Except maybe...

“Potter!” He had already jumped three feet high and drawn his wand, pointing it at the offending voice in his office, when he noticed Malfoy, who had been clearly leaning onto Ron’s empty desk, standing with a frown on his face.

“Hello to you too, you lunatic. You should think twice before startling half asleep, very much armed Aurors first thing in the morning.” He snapped.

The blond smirked. “Oh, so I startled you? I thought such a valiant Auror, not to mention Saviour-of-everybody’s-magical-arse would be more difficult to scare...”

All right. He had served it to him on a silver platter. Trying very hard not to fall into their familiar banter, he sighed and replied “Of course you didn’t. I mean... you just caught me by surprise that’s all.” Seeing the blond’s mouth open to retort he quickly added. “What do you want anyway?”   
Of course, he knew very well what Malfoy wanted. He must not be all that happy to suddenly have to work side by side with the man who’d been his “arch-nemesis” for years. All he had to do, now, was convince him that they would work better together. _‘At least we would if he shut that annoying little mouth of his’._

The wizard gave him an evaluating look, as if to see if he was lying, then answered “What, you don’t know? I’ve been told I’ll be working here, with you, until the task force is dismantled.” Harry could almost hear the silent continuation _‘Which is ridiculous, of course, aren’t you going to use your Saviour-of-the-wizarding-world thing to free us from this very much unwanted partnership?’_

“Potter are you listening? What are you smiling at?”

The black haired wizard cleared his voice. “It’s nothing. Anyway, yes, I did know, I was told yesterday” _‘I was actually the one who suggested it in the first place’_ he thought. _‘But I’m not going to tell you that.’_

“And?”

“And I think it’s a great idea.” Harry had to restrain himself not to burst out laughing at the horrified look on Malfoy’s face.

“Are you serious? _Why_ would anyone in their right mind put us together? Everyone knows what our relationship is like!” the blond said, colouring slightly as soon as he saw Harry raising his eyebrows at his use of the word ‘relationship’. “Oh, you’re so mature!”, he sighed, “Still, the question stands.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Harry asked. “We seemed to work together well enough yesterday...”

Silence stretched. He could see Malfoy averting his eyes and pressing his lips in a thin line; when he finally met his gaze, he said, in a low voice “Sharing a table and some ideas didn’t make us friends, Potter. I was high on caffeine, Merlin knows how many coffees I’ve drunk yesterday, and pretty stressed. That’s probably why I was friendlier than usual but it was just that: an isolated occasion.”

Harry’s first reaction was to feel stung. Not because his and Ron’s plan was failing, no. He’d thought they were getting somewhere, putting an end to a long time, childish enmity... for a moment he really believed he could become friends with that weird, kinder but still witty Malfoy.

In a moment of Gryffindor bravery he said just that. “You know, it’s quite a shame. You’re a prick – you really are” he added before the blonde could interrupt him. “But you’re also smart and hard working. Maybe we’re not friends, but we’re going to work together because I need your knowledge and you need me to act out your ideas in the field. And who knows, we could become friends when all this is over. I kind of liked ‘tame’ Malfoy” he concluded with a sincere smile at his new partner’s shocked face. Than a realization hit him. _‘Was that another one of his stupid self-defence acts? Isolating himself so that he won’t get hurt?’  
_ The glimmer of emotion he could see behind Malfoy’s usually guarded eyes confirmed his suspicion.

Draco Malfoy grinned and replied. “Polite? Maybe. But tame? Not a chance!”

Then, when he and Harry managed to reign in their chuckles, he whispered “When do we start?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TO ANYONE with good knowledge of the english language and possibly infinite patience: I'm (STILL) looking for a beta who might help me to speed things up and make them better.   
> If you want to, you can contact me here (even just to say hi!): http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/


	8. If we just let ourselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday today and the guilt I felt for not posting for so long finally caught up with me!   
> Hope you all will enjoy it :)

Chapter 7

_A week later, Ministry of Magic…_

Harry’s last week had been hectic, to say the least. After his and Malfoy’s newfound… agreement, before actually starting to work on their lead, they had to run an enormous number of errands just to get the clearance to acquire Muggle import-export registers. In the three day it took them to have it, Harry found himself actually thanking whatever forces out there had convinced him to work with Malfoy: while he himself often drowned in bureaucracy, the other seemed to gracefully swim through it with precise efficiency, effectively cutting their waiting time in half. If he’d been working with Ron, by the time he and Malfoy were standing in front of the mildly Confused Muggle, collecting the registers, they would have still been crying over the thousands of papers they had to fill in and sign.

Then, of course, they had to start checking the registers for Sutherlandia Frutescens and Harry’s days of doing next to nothing, waiting for Malfoy to fill in the forms ended, only to be replaced by endless days of reading and paper cuts. They both started having late nights at the office, turning dusty pages and having breaks just to get food or go to the loo, mostly in silence, sometimes with muttered words of frustration. On Monday morning, Harry decided he’d had enough. They still hadn’t found anything worth mentioning and they were exhausted. _‘A nice little break would do’_ he thought, entering his office and finding Malfoy already sitting in his spot behind Ron’s desk, eyes glued to his dossier. After the first few unsettling days of finding someone who was not his best friend in the room when he arrived, he’d gotten used to see the blond head of his new partner where a ginger one should have been. With him being extremely silent and working so hard, one almost had trouble to notice Malfoy’s presence at all. Until they saw the faces in Ron’s pictures turned all kind of weird colours, at least.

“You really should stop doing that, you know? One day he’ll come back when I still haven’t fixed them and he’ll definitely hunt you down and make you pay.” He said with a grin, pointing his wand to his own smiling, Gryffindor red face and turning it back to its original colour.

Malfoy smirked without raising his eyes. “I’d like to see him try. Good morning to you too, by the way.”

Harry chuckled. “You know” he added, “we’ve been on this day and night since Thursday and, deny it all you want, we’re both knackered. Let’s have a break.”

“No.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not tired. I’m perfectly fine. You had the entire week end to relax, you don’t need extra time.”

“If I remember correctly,” Harry growled “I didn’t have _the entire_ week end, because a certain workaholic former ferret dragged me here on Saturday to work on the damn registers!”

Malfoy looked at him and raised a single eyebrow. “Funny, Potter, I don’t remember dragging anyone. I just recall saying I would be here working because of how _important_ our job is. And I’ll let that ferret comment slide, because _I_ am the better person.”

_‘The nerve of his!’_ Harry took a deep breath and counted to ten to calm himself. Then replied “You know what? You’re right. You didn’t ask me to come, but I did anyway, because that’s what partners _do_. They stick together. We may be from different departments but in this task force we’re partners and if you don’t take breaks I don’t either. I just hope we don’t mess up and miss any important clues because we’re tired.” Then, before the other could speak, he said “Oh, and spare me the ‘I’m not tired’ bullshit, because I’m not going to buy it. The bags under your eyes couldn’t be darker if you’d embraced your inner love for face painting!”

Malfoy didn’t reply, so he simply slid into his chair, opened a file and stared reading.

* * *

 

_Twelve hours later, 9:00 pm…_

Harry, by now, was certain: his back would stay hunched forever. He’d have to retire in his old school and be known as the Hunchback of Hogwarts. He risked a glance at his colleague and decided it was unfair. While he most certainly looked an ugly mess, tiredness only seemed to make Draco Malfoy more handsome, his hair ruffled from passing hands through it in moments of particular stress or frustration, grey eyes half lidded, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, most likely to contain the burning headache Harry too was suffering from.

The silence was broken by a loud grumble. “Ah,” Harry said when Malfoy looked around to locate the source of the noise. “That’d be my stomach. I’m starving.”

The other’s lips morphed into a thin line, as if uncertain if he should speak or not. Then he said, “I’m hungry too. But the cafeteria has already closed and I wanted to work for a few more hours…”

That’s when Ron’s words from some days before rang into Harry’s mind. _‘What’s easier than falling in love while being together every day, looking for criminals?’_

“Do you want to come back to my apartment with me? We can bring the files, have a quick dinner and start working again, preferably on something that is _not_ as uncomfortable as this chairs.” Why not take advantage of the situation? He could finally relax a little after a long day and try to seduce a very good-looking man all in one evening. He eyed his blond partner and saw him absently biting his lower lip. _‘How can he be maddeningly irritating one moment and irresistibly cute the other?’_

Finally Malfoy spoke. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“Why not?” Harry asked.

“Just… I wouldn’t want to intrude. It’s not like we’re friends or anything… Besides, I’m not sure we’d get any work done if we move to a more informal setting.”

Despite the ache in his back, despite his exhaustion and slight exasperation, Harry laughed. Hard. “You are incredible, you know? You say we’re not friends and that we can’t properly function in a… what was it? An ‘informal setting” he said, making quotation marks with his fingers “but we’ve known each other for fourteen years, we have seen the worst of each other. Maybe we haven’t seen the best, but when it counted we saved each other’s lives. We can have civil conversations without much effort and we work splendidly together, because sometimes we don’t agree or share the same point of view, but we’re still able to integrate them easily. We have… _chemistry_. We could be friends if we just let ourselves. Why don’t we?”

Noticing the darkened look on Malfoy’s face, Harry thought he’d let himself get carried away.

When Malfoy spoke, he didn’t make eye contact. “We have resented each other since day one…”

Harry smiled softly “We have. But the person I resented was a spoiled little prick who got off on hurting those who were less lucky than he was and who bought his way around with daddy’s money. You’re not that person anymore and I, too, have changed. Age and the war changed us. And we’re not at school anymore. We don’t _have_ to hate each other just because we did once.”

They did make eye contact then and it was so intense it burned.

“All right” Malfoy replied softly, with a tired little grin. “But I still think you have an ego the size of the Great Hall.”

“Good, because I still think you’re a stuck up prat.” Harry chuckled and extended his right hand. “Friends?”

A pale, long-fingered hand slipped in his. “Friends.”

“So, will you have dinner with me, now, or not?”

He had sounded quite too much like someone asking another out for a date and, judging from the slight colouring of his face, the blond had too.

“Sure.” He said, gathering a few registers. “I’m famished!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STILL looking for a beta! Someone contacted me last time I asked, but I don't know how (did I scare them away in my inexperience? Am I so incapable with Tumblr that we managed not to get in contact?) I lost hold of them.   
> If any of you want to give it a go, I'm yesiliveinfandom on Tumblr. If you just want to pass by to say hi or to curse me for being such a slow writer, you can do that too.


	9. How do you flirt with Draco Malfoy?

Chapter 8

_9:15 pm, Harry Potter’s apartment…_

_‘What the hell was I thinking,’_ Harry thought, preparing two plates filled with Kreacher’s delicious shepherd’s pie and boiled asparagus, _‘when I asked him to be friends? I’m supposed to make him fall in love with me and then dump him!’_

What puzzled him even more was the fact that his request had been sincere. He really thought this older, more mature Malfoy was someone he wanted to be friends with. So, where did that leave him? What would he tell Ron? He could just picture himself going to his best mate and saying: “You know, I’ve worked with Malfoy for a week and we might have exchanged something like fifty words in total, but he seems a nice enough bloke. I want to stop trying to make him miserable and become his friend.” Ron would _kill_ him.

_‘Besides,’_ he kept telling himself, _‘do I know him well enough to risk my friendship with Ron over him? What if he turns out worse than he was before?’_ By then, though, he knew he was just looking for excuses. He knew the blond was, if not a nice person, at least a good one. One who didn’t deserve to be played with that way. He owed Ron, though, and he was his best friend, so he would pretend a bit for his sake, maybe flirt a little: Malfoy was smart, he would not believe his charade and everyone would be happy.

He sighed in relief. _‘So much for Gryffindor courage…’_

He made his way into the living room with a food-laden tray in hand. Malfoy, who was standing with his back to the kitchen, scanning the room, started a little at the noise and turned to face Harry with a slightly guilty expression, as if he’d been caught doing something highly inappropriate.

Harry smiled. “You do know you could sit down, right?” he asked, gesturing towards the dining table in front of the window.

“I just thought your house would be more…”

“Messy? You’re not the only one. Almost everyone I bring here is somehow amazed at the fact that I _don’t_ live in a pigsty,” Harry said with a playful frown.

At that, Malfoy relaxed and smiled a little too. “It is a bit of a commonplace. You’re a man who lives alone, so your house must be a mess. I should have known you wouldn’t have been what I expected. You never are” he replied softly.

They sat down and ate in a comfortable silence, broken only to praise Kreacher’s excellent cuisine, which gave Harry some time to think about his course of action. _‘How do you_ flirt _with Draco Malfoy?’_ he asked himself. _‘What do I do, when I try to hook up with a guy?’_

Step one: ask them if they’re single.

“So, I was wondering…” said Harry, finishing his last bites of shepherd’s pie “Do you live alone or do you have someone waiting for you at home?”

“Oh, I still live at the Manor with my mother” Malfoy answered with a small, oblivious grin. “But we live pretty separate lives, only really meeting for breakfast or sometimes dinner, so I wouldn’t really say she’s waiting for me.”

That one was unexpected. Apparently, Malfoy had completely misunderstood his question. _‘What now?’_ As soon as the other was finished too, Harry stood up and sent the dishes to the sink with a flick of his wand. Then he summoned the registers they’d brought with them and handed one to his partner. “If it’s alright to you, I was thinking we could read them on the couch. Is that ok?”

“Of course” Malfoy replied. He grabbed the offered file, sat gracefully on the couch, and started reading, while Harry sprawled beside him. After a few minutes during which he had read the same page over and over, though, Harry’s brain decided that working for almost thirteen hours straight was not an option and he started to slip into what his friends used to call _flirt-mode._

“Do you have a partner?” At almost ten in the evening finesse wasn’t an option either.

Malfoy sighed, still reading. “We work individually in International Magical Cooperation, so no, I don’t.” Misunderstood again. “I meant a relationship.” Harry chuckled. “A lover.”

The blond’s eyes left the tome in his hands and he raised a single, fair eyebrow in a silent ‘Seriously?’

“I thought we would be working” he said curtly, colouring a little, “and I don’t see what business it is of yours, but the answer is still no.”

Great. What was step two, again? Oh, yes, the Sexy-Saviour-Of-The-Wizarding-World stare, the one who made his future conquest squirm and fall at his feet.

His visual caress of Malfoy’s concentrated eyes, soft hair and long limbs, was cut short by a tired “Is something wrong?”

“No, why should it be?”

“You’re staring.”

_‘Oh, this guy is not smart enough to deflect flirting. Merlin’s pants, he just can’t take a hint!’_ Harry thought. He decided not to mull on why Malfoy’s obliviousness felt like a blessing and a curse at the same time.

He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t notice. I must be more tired than I thought.”

“It’s all right, just… try to concentrate for a little while. Our work can help save lives.” Draco whispered, completely serious, before turning to his file again.

He was clearly just as tired as Harry was, if not more, but his first thought was for the people out there that his job could save. Not for his reputation, not for the promotion he surely wanted and definitely not for _flirting_. When had Draco Malfoy become such a wonderful, selfless person?

Right in that moment Harry’s brain did something very stupid. It decided to overlook steps three and four (chat him up and see if he’s game) and skip directly to step five: caress his thigh.

Malfoy started and looked at him, grey eyes as wide as saucers. “What are you doing?” he asked in a low, confused voice.

_‘Damn. What do I tell him now?!’_

“Ehm… you had a spider crawling on your leg and… I got it off you.” he said lamely. _‘Please believe it, please, please…’_

He’d obviously found the wrong excuse, though, because as soon as those words left his mouth, Malfoy let the register fall to the floor and scuttled as far from him as he could.

“Dear mother of Merlin” he shrieked “is it off me? IS IT OFF ME?? Potter I’m not going to sit on that couch again until you kill the damn spider! Where is it now?”

Harry didn’t even try to reign in the thunderous laughter that filled his throat and the tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Potter! Stop _laughing_!” Malfoy whined while hugging himself with an arm and covering his bright pink face with his free hand, even if he himself had started snickering.

As soon as he regained his breath, the Auror stood up and kneeled in front of the couch with his back to the other, pretended to scoop something in his hand, opened the window beside the bookshelf and threw the non-existent spider outside.

“Better now?” he asked between chuckles, putting a hand on Malfoy’s shoulder and gently pushing him until he sat on the cushions again.

“From the way you seemed to find it funny I can guess you don’t know many arachnophobic people,” said the blond, still blushing, before bending down to reach the fallen folder.

“Actually, Ron is arachnophobic,” Harry replied with a large smile, remembering his best friend’s horrified, twelve year old voice saying _‘Why spiders? Why couldn’t it be follow the butterflies?!’_

“I can’t believe it…”

“Yes, I know, you would never tell just looking at him…” Harry noticed just mid-reply that Malfoy wasn’t listening to him at all and was scanning the register wide eyed, mouth agape. Still looking as if he’d been the witness of a miracle, he turned to his partner and said in a breathy voice, “I found it.”

Elated, they saw that two big shipments of Sutherlandia Frutescens, coming from the Sicilian port of Augusta, in Italy, had entered the country in the previous months, requested by a garden centre just outside London.

“Go to sleep, Malfoy. We’re going there tomorrow, see if the owner knows something,” said Harry, in the authoritative voice he used to encourage young Aurors, handing Malfoy a pot of Floo powder.

The other grinned and nodded, grabbing a handful of the powder and headed to the fireplace. Just before entering it, he stopped, and turned towards his host.“Thank you for dinner, Potter."

“We’ve known each other for fourteen years. Isn’t it about time we got on a first name basis?”

“Thank you for dinner… Harry” he repeated, the name rolling on his tongue. “And for the spider.” he added with a snicker.

“I actually think we should thank the little guy for helping us find our best lead so far, but still…you’re welcome.”

Then, Draco whispered a ‘Good night’, threw the Floo powder into the fire and, with a “Malfoy Manor!” and a clear, green flicker of flames, he was gone.

* * *

 

An hour and a half later, around ElevenPM, Harry was still stretched out on his couch, in a curious mood that was a mixture of tiredness, happiness for the progress in his investigation and inexplicable frustration for Malfoy’s lack of reaction to his flirting. He didn’t want Malfoy to like him, did he? He had almost slipped off into sleep, when the flames in the hearth turned green again with a flash and a dreamy voice said, “Good evening, Harry.”

His lips stretched in a big smile and he sat up. “Good evening, Luna. How are you?”

Luna’s head, surrounded by the flames, looked almost as if it belonged there, in its weird fashion. It tipped backwards to observe her friend better. “I’m very well, thank you. And you?”

“Dead tired. I’m working a lot.”

“I see…” said Luna. Then, with her usual, uncanny ability to spot people’s problems without their knowledge, she added, “Boy problems?”

Harry sighed. He had found out over the years that he could tell Luna pretty much everything, without the risk of her telling anyone or mocking him. She was just that cool.

“A little, yes.” he answered “I’ve been trying to flirt with a man, but he just… ignored everything I did. I don’t understand if he’s oblivious or simply not interested. I wonder what I could do to make him understand I’m attracted to him…”

The girl looked pensive for a moment. “I think you should stop worrying. Just be yourself and you’ll see if he’s interested or not.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you” said Harry. “Why did you call, by the way? Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Oh,” she answered, “I wanted to know if you could give me any information on the case of that new drug on the market. You see, dad needs a filler because we’re not sure we’ll manage to publish the article on Crumple-Horned Snorkacks on time.”

_‘Typical Luna’_ Harry inwardly chuckled.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t disclose any information while the investigation is still ongoing. I promise I’ll do my best to get the Quibbler an exclusive as soon as we catch the bad guys, though.”

“It’s all right,” she replied. “We’ll figure out something else in the meantime. I’ll leave you to your rest, now. Good night!”

Wishing her good night, Harry stood up and went to bed. Just like every other time he had a talk with Luna, he relaxed completely and was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

That night he dreamt of Malfoy again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my lovely beta, Guns, who's been a huge help, and to all of you who are still reading. Your support means a lot! Leave me a review maybe? If you want to say hi or ask questions, my Tumblr's here: http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/


	10. Get to work, for Merlin's sake!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explanation (and usual apology) for the lateness of this all are in the notes down below. Here I'd like to thank everyone who is still reading and showing me their support (even if I don't always reply to comments they're all read and shown the appropriate amount of love, in the form of furious blushing and smiles from ear to ear).  
> Enjoy!

Chapter 9

_6:29 am, Harry Potter’s apartment._

Harry woke up exactly a minute before the alarm clock went off, feeling rested and content. He couldn’t remember what he had dreamed about but, whatever it was, it was enough to give him that fluttery feeling one only gets when something very nice has happened.

Yawning, he grabbed his glasses from the bedside table and looked out of the window on the other side of his bedroom. It was a cloudy, terse November morning, with the sun appearing from behind a veil of clouds, only to be covered once again minutes after. All in all, Harry thought, it seemed as if it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to rain or not.

Just as soon as he was going to head to the kitchen to fix himself some breakfast, a mouth-watering smell of sausages and fried tomatoes hit his nose. Apparently, Kreacher had already prepared far more than any one person could eat.

“Good morning, Kreacher” he said, entering the kitchen. A full English breakfast was already lying on the table, ready to be eaten. “Thank you for breakfast, but… shouldn’t you be at Hogwarts?”

“Kreacher has completed his tasks for the morning, Master Harry,” replied the elf with a smile and a bow. “But you should eat! You has to go to work soon!”

Harry snorted, not bothering to correct Kreacher and tell him it wasn’t “soon” if it was more than two hours away, and tucked in.

* * *

 

_9:00 am, Ministry of Magic, office of Aurors Potter and Weasley._

Harry walked into his office fully certain that he would find a familiar blond head behind his partner’s desk, messing with his photos. That’s why he was pretty surprised when he saw a ginger one instead and was greeted by a “What the hell happened to my pictures?”

“Hello to you too, Ron.”

“Sorry, mate. Just… why are our faces coloured pink, green and red?” Ron asked, holding the picture Malfoy had “redecorated” the day before.

Harry tried his best to put on an innocent expression. “No idea.”

The other growled. “We both know who did this… that ferrety git! Oh, but we’ll see who’s going to win this mutual pranks thing!”

Despite knowing that eventually they would have had to talk about that subject, all Harry could feel right then was absolute dread. His discomfort grew even more when Ron asked, “Speaking of which, how’s it going? Are you two…” and he wriggled his eyebrows suggestively “ _bonding?_ ”

“He… er… had dinner at mine, yesterday. We worked late.” Harry replied. “We found the plant’s shipments. As soon as he arrives, we’re getting clearance from Robards to interrogate the Muggle owner of the garden centre it was shipped to.”

“Wow, Harry! You found it! At least you’re getting somewhere, even if you have to work with the prat. I have been working with Winters for _days_ , reviewing thousands of criminal records and magical signatures and we’ve found _nothing_. I swear, I won’t make it to the end of the month without going mad.” said Ron, rolling his eyes.

Harry grimaced sympathetically. Alice Winters, Ron’s new partner, was a weird, middle-aged witch, who usually worked as a link between the Departments of International Magical Cooperation and Magical Transportation. Always “eccentrically” dressed, most of the time so distracted she didn’t hear half of what people said, she had become something of an interdepartmental joke.

“Is she really that terrible?” he asked.

His best friend made a sound halfway through a snort and a groan. “Imagine Luna, just ten times crazier and nowhere near as fun.”

Considering that Harry had never actually met anyone crazier than Luna, he thought that, yes, he was pretty happy he hadn’t ended up having her as a partner.

“At least she’s not Malfoy, though. Must suck to be stuck with him, even if it is for the plan’s sake.” the ginger added in a low voice.

“Actually,” Harry replied, “I work quite well with him. After all Malfoy is…”

However, Ron never knew what exactly Malfoy was, because right in that moment the door burst open to reveal the very object of their conversation, ruffled and obviously out of breath, saying hurriedly, “Harry, I’m sorry I’m so late, I oversle-” He stopped mid-sentence as soon as he realized Ron was there. He recomposed himself and said, more calmly, “I overslept. Good morning, Weasley.”

Ron rolled his eyes, patted Harry on the shoulder and, without answering to the greeting, said his goodbyes. On the threshold, he half turned towards Malfoy and threw him a heated glare. “If I find out you’ve tampered with my pictures again, I’ll make you regret it!”

“Is that a threat?” the blond called after him, smirking, but whether the Auror hadn’t heard or he just didn’t bother to respond, the question remained unanswered.

“Whatever.” Malfoy shrugged, shedding his coat and picking another picture. Frowning in concentration, he pointed his wand to Ron’s face alone, turning it into a bright Smurf blue, while Harry snickered.

“As fun as it all was, try not to purposefully make him mad again, alright?”

His partner smiled mischievously. “I’m afraid he makes it too easy,” he said. Then, changing the subject, he added “Now that I’m here we can go speak to Robards to get the go-ahead we need to question the Muggle right? We’ve already lost way too much time.”

“And the fault is…? Whose exactly?”

“Mine, again, I’m sorry, I couldn’t really sleep last night.”

Harry widened his eyes dramatically and, while he gathered his robes from his desk with one hand, he brought the other to his mouth in a staged gasp. “Did I just hear Draco Malfoy admitting he was at fault and _apologizing for it_?”

Malfoy rolled his eyes, his lips smirking, and turned towards the door. “Just don’t get used to it, Harry.”

Hearing his name pronounced by that soft, smiling voice, he was stuck into place, a traitorous giddy feeling blossoming in his chest. He sighed. _‘Seriously? You’re not a hormonal fifteen year old! Get to work, for Merlin’s sake!’_ Following Malfoy, he exited his office in stride.

* * *

 

_10:03 am, B. & O. Garden Centre._

As a matter of fact it took more than half an hour to get Robard’s clearance for an interrogation involving a Muggle – even if the best part of it consisted in snide remarks about “Auror’s superior investigative abilities”. Harry would have told him that Draco had found the shipping address (and while running away from an imaginary spider, no less!), but the other wizard silenced him with a glance and a grin. In the feeble sunlight of northern London, Harry smiled. It had felt… private, almost intimate, somehow, as if they shared an inside joke no one else would understand.

“Do you wish for tea and pastries to better enjoy the sun or may we go ahead?” said Malfoy, raising one blonde eyebrow.

“Uhm, sorry, I spaced out” Harry replied, sheepishly.

His partner smiled. “You know you seem to do that a lot?”

The Auror looked around, avoiding his gaze “I’m all for introspection, I guess… Ah, there it is. B. & O. Garden Centre”.

The garden centre itself, while nestled in a very spacious, redbrick neighbourhood, was quite small, only a few rectangular greenhouses surrounding an octagonal building made of glass and steel, most probably the owner’s office.

Harry headed that way, Malfoy in tow, and their entrance was greeted by the sound of a little bell above the door. With a charming smile –and a quick, muttered Confundus Charm, he introduced himself and the blond as police officers to the pudgy, glassy eyed owner and requested to see his registers of the past few months.

The man grinned brightly, eyes still unfocused, and led them to the back. “Here, officers! What did you say you needed, again?”

Malfoy shot him a half amused half exasperated look. _‘Can you not even do this properly?’_ his expression clearly said.

Harry shrugged. He had probably overdone it a bit. Exactly the reason why it was usually Ron (who’d been perfectly taught by Hermione) who casted that spell during missions.

“We need a copy of your sale’s registers for the months of May and October and for you to answer some of our questions, sir.”

“Ah, yes, yes. Just a minute, if you please.”

Ten minutes later the copies were still in the making, since poor Mr. Bentley kept spacing out every few minutes, and Harry, though he felt guilty, decided he’d had enough. “Would you mind if we took a look at the originals while we wait, Sir?” he asked.

The man smiled and nodded enthusiastically, gesturing for them to sit at his desk. The file which recorded May’s sales was not at all large, only a few pages, meticulously ordered and neatly written. It took the two of them very little to find what they were looking for, even if, judging from his audible gasp, it was Malfoy who noticed it first.

Of course, Harry thought, he was surprised: the name belonged to a man who had been dead for the last seven years. A quick look to the folder labelled ‘October’ confirmed what they had found in the other: the client was registered as Severus Snape.

When the Auror glanced at his partner he saw that he was terribly, impossibly pale.

“I’m lifting the spell,” Draco whispered urgently. “You confused him silly and we need him clear headed. We need answers.”

Harry sighed, looking at him with sympathy. “Draco, you know as well as I do that Snape is dead.”

“I know,” he answered, staring determinedly straight ahead, “but the sooner we interrogate Mr. Bentley, the sooner I- _we_ ’ll know who used his name as a cover to commit a crime. And _why_.”

With a slightly trembling, long-fingered hand, Draco waved his wand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, but I had some beta problems - yes, again. As I said in some answers to the comments, I sent this chapter for beta reading about a month ago but nothing came of it. Why? That's the exact same thing I asked.  
> So... unbetaed. All mistakes are mine.


	11. What the hell, Malfoy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the lovely Dinkydog.

Chapter 10

_10:42, B. & O. Garden Centre._

Despite the fact that Draco’s muttered ‘Finite’ was not a spell that produced visible effects, unlike for example the bright red light of a ‘Stupefy’, Harry immediately noticed when it hit the middle aged man in front of him. The slightly opened mouth turned into a practical line, the previously slumped shoulders straightened, the vacant eyes became suddenly focused. Mr. Bentley shook his head, as if to get water out of his ears, and looked at them inquiringly.

“Sir?” Harry asked, before the man could start asking questions, pointing at Snape’s name on the register, “Do you remember this man? Could you describe him?”

After yet another puzzled look, probably wondering what could have him feeling as if his brain had been scrambled and then put back in place and how these officers had managed not to notice, the man said, “I remember him, vaguely. He was very specific in his requests and he came back more than once to place the orders and to collect them, even if we offer delivery service. I thought it was weird, but hey, maybe he didn’t want to pay for it.”

“Very well, but can you describe him?” Draco interrupted him, brusquely.

“I’m not sure.”

Samuel Bentley saw the two officers give each other anxious looks. The blond one’s face, especially, was pale and drawn. It was the face of a man determined to do anything to get his way. He didn’t like it one bit. “I have security cameras, though. The footage from May is gone, I only keep it for a month, but there’s the one from when he came in October.”

The tension in the room seemed to be released all at once, when both the men let out a breath neither knew they were holding.

“Could you please show us the recording?” Harry asked.

Bentley nodded and walked around the desk to sit and turn the old, greyish computer on. The Aurors followed him and settled at his back, leaning down to watch the screen. After several moments, several whirring sounds from the computer and several scoffs from Draco a window turned up on the screen and the footage started playing.

The date in the upper right corner read the 3rd of October, 9:00 am. Moments after the beginning of the file, an elderly woman entered the miniature office in front of them. Seconds trickled into minutes and Malfoy’s fingers started drumming on his tightly crossed arms. “Can’t it go any faster?”

Harry had been surprised by the sudden appearance of Snape’s name in the records, but what puzzled him even more was Malfoy’s reaction. The man he’d learned to know as quiet and polite to the point of being almost standoffish had reverted, in a short time, back to the impatient, ill-mannered boy he had been. Surely he knew there was no possible way for their old professor to have escaped death?

As he lay a calming hand on Malfoy’s tense back, images from that terrible, impossible, life-changing afternoon danced behind his eyes, of a snake’s fangs sinking into pale flesh, of blood spurts, of memories in a vial, and a voice, feeble but clear, rang through his ears, _“Look… at… me…”_

Malfoy shivered and Harry came back to reality. What had felt like the longest of minutes had barely been seconds.

Bentley shot a weary glance at the weird blond officer, still coiled tight, and nodded sheepishly.

A vortex of images whirled in front of them: after the old lady came a man around his thirties, in a smart business suit, then two girls holding a bouquet, then a boy with the garden centre logo on the back of the shirt and a stack of receipts in his hands – obviously the delivery boy. Then followed, faster and faster, a woman, a man, another man, two teenagers, a grandma with a couple of toddlers, until suddenly the video was set on ‘play’ again.

“Here” said the Muggle, pointing a calloused finger at the screen.

The clock in the corner read 4:35 pm, when the door opened to reveal a young man in his early twenties, pale and curly haired, wearing a pair of expensive looking jeans and a dark shirt.

Harry paused the recording. “Is this him, sir?”

“Yes,” Bentley replied, confidently. “As I said, he didn’t just ask for any kind of potted plant and he came twice; hard to forget him.”

Malfoy, watching the man on the screen, had deflated a little, replacing the taut expression he’d worn earlier with one of irritated confusion.

_‘Clearly he doesn’t recognize him…’_ Harry thought, studying the pensive face and the furrow of his blonde eyebrows.

His partner cleared his throat and asked, “Do you perhaps remember his hair and eye colour, sir? Since the security feed is in black and white.”

The Auror barely heard the man answer “Brownish hair, dark eyes,” focused as he was on Malfoy’s voice. He was obviously trying his best to sound calm and professional again, having probably noticed his earlier slip. Anyone who knew him, though, even just a little – which was _not_ Harry’s case, since he’d spent six years listening to him spouting nonsense, long enough to be able to catalogue each tone, each inflection – anyone, really, could feel the vein of nervousness under his inexpressive drawl.

Harry tried to intercept his gaze, raising his eyebrows in a silent “What the hell, Malfoy?” but the other studiously avoided him.

Only outside, once they’d gathered all the material and said goodbye to a newly Confused Mr. Bentley, could Harry grab Malfoy by the wrist to stop his power walk toward the apparition point.

“What the _hell_ , Malfoy?”

The other tugged his arm free and scowled. “Oh, is it Malfoy again, now?”

Harry sighed. “Sorry, _Draco._ Force of habit. You still haven’t answered my question, though.”

“Well,” his partner replied, without making eye contact, “It was a very vague question.”

Resisting the urge to smack him on the nape, _hard_ , he took a deep breath. _‘Count to ten, Harry…’_ “Well, then I’ll just have to rephrase it. How about ‘what the hell happened in there, Draco, you suddenly went pale as a ghost and started _interrogating_ the guy, instead of just interviewing him, as if he was a criminal?’ Is it specific enough?”

Malfoy – Draco, damn! – bit his lip and kept looking at the pavement. He closed his eyes, inhaled slowly and said, “I could tell you right now, but we really don’t have the time for that. We have a one-month-old piece of paper from which we have to try and recover a magical signature and an identikit to check. I’ll explain all about what happened in there, I promise, but please allow me to do it _after_ we’ve finished at the Ministry. Maybe somewhere quiet.” At last, he stared right into Harry’s eyes. “Harry, I’m sorry you had to see that. I know how unprofessional it was… it won’t happen again.”

He _did_ look sorry. _‘And so drained, even from such a small confession,’_ Harry mused. Almost without noticing, the hand that had gripped the blond’s wrist came to rest on his shoulder and squeezed, lightly caressing him with its thumb. He nodded. “There’s one thing I have to know right now, though. You’re alright, are you? I… really meant it when I said ‘pale as a ghost’.”

Draco let out a small chuckle, but made no move to dislodge Harry’s hand from where it lay on him. “Don’t worry, I will be.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for all the kudos and the comments! I smile like a loon when I see them. This story is still very much a work in progress, but your support is what keeps it going.   
> As always, let me know how you're enjoying it, here or on [Tumblr](http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/)


	12. The Fourth Apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those who follow me on Tumblr: it's still Sunday where I am, so I kept my promise of having the chapter done before the end of the weekend.  
> To all of you poor things following me for ages: thank you for all your lovely comments and for sticking with me this long. I've found a job that has me working crazy hours (during the summer too), so that's mostly why it took me so long to update. Still, I went from updating after a year and a half to updating after eight months, so I guess that's an improvement.   
> I hope you'll enjoy this extra long chapter (I certainly enjoyed writing it!)

Chapter 11

_A couple of minutes later, same day, Ministry of Magic._

“Let me see if I understand what you’re asking,” Ron said, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “You two are asking me to draw a magical signature strong enough to use as identification from a piece of paper our guy touched _once_ , a month ago, for the long time needed to write in the name of the plant he wanted and to sign it?”

Mal-Draco’s exasperated sigh felt like that tiny burst of wind which then develops into a hurricane.

He had barely opened his mouth to draw a venomous “Weasley,” when Harry twirled to face him, with a placating smile and a pleading look in his eyes, and said, “Draco? Go have a nice, hot cup of tea, please?”

Alice Winters, Ron’s temporary partner, who’d been watching the exchange from the side lines, took a step closer. “I was going down for some tea myself. We could go together,” she said.

Draco sighed wearily and nodded at Harry, who patted his shoulder and turned to see the two out of the archives.

When he came back, Ron was sitting on a stool, leaning his head on one hand and righting a stack of yellowed folders with the other. Harry sat down next to him, keeping silent.

“I think you two are barking mad,” Ron sighed, exasperated, “You do know that the chance of finding anything is practically zero, right? Because even if I managed to pull a magical signature out of that scrap of paper – which I reckon I probably could, even if it’s not going to be easy – our perp might not have a criminal record to compare it with.”

“I know, mate, but it’s the only lead we’ve got. This guy is clever, whoever he is…”

“Or _she_ is,” the other replied, with the same expression Hermione had on when she exploded in a feminist rant.

“Or she is,” he conceded, “Anyway, did you even see the name on that form?”

Ron fumbled with the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper inside it and squinted his eyes to read in the dim light.

“Erm… Soreus Skoge?”

“Nope,” Harry shook his head and pointed at the top of the page, where the name was written in capital letters.

“Severus… what?!” Ron turned to face him, eyes as wide as saucers, “Snape is _dead!_ We saw the sodding snake practically eat him for dinner!”

“Believe me, we had the same exact reaction.”

Ron frowned. “So that’s why Malfoy had his knickers in a twist. Must be upset that someone used his favourite teacher’s name to… do what exactly? Play with us? Obviously, Snape would have never used his real name to commit a crime – the man was many things, but stupid is not one of those. Maybe they’re after the attention? Or they want to make a statement?”

Harry hesitated. “You mean some sort of pledge of loyalty to the Death Eaters?” Ron shrugged. “I don’t think that’s the case, Ron. I mean, everyone knows he wasn’t really on their side, by now.”

As soon as the war had ended, reporters from all over the country had flocked around Harry like hungry birds around scattered crumbs. He could remember clearly his grief, his confusion, his relief, all captured by the flashes of hundreds of cameras. Still in a daze, he realised he burned with the need to tell what had really happened to anyone who’d listen – which, it turned out, was pretty much everyone. He felt that he owed it to all those who’d died. He owed it to Dumbledore and to Narcissa Malfoy, but, most of all, he owed it to Snape.

In the middle of June, he’d sat in a dark, hot conference room at the Ministry, so crammed with people that, if he’d thrown a Knut in the middle of a crowd, it probably would never have gotten to the floor. When he’d stepped out of there he had forgotten every single word he’d said, but people all around him praised his speech as a life-changing one – the speech of the century, even.

Since then, everyone in the Wizarding community had known the role Severus Snape had played in the war. In fact, many books had been written on the subject. The likelihood of their dealer having chosen their old potion professor’s name to link themselves to a Death Eater tradition was next to nothing.

“They know he meant something to a lot of the people in this investigation. They’re trying to distract us,” he muttered eventually, thinking of the rush of memories that had assaulted him and of Draco’s pale, stricken face.

Ron’s hand, heavy on his shoulder, broke his musings. It was nice to know how easily his friend could sense his inner turmoil and do exactly the right thing to help him escape from his thoughts. The comforting squeeze gave him back his focus. “I almost forgot: the owner of B.&O. Garden Centre made an identikit. Of course they might have been Polyjuiced, but we could still use it to try and narrow the research down. What do you think?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Ron nodded, “I’ll also look into the magical signatures of ex Hogwarts students from the time Snape taught there; one of them might have thought that using their dick of a Potion Master’s name would be smart. Besides, most of the people who knew him as a Death Eater were students, so… it’s worth a try.”

Standing from his stool, Harry stretched his back with a groan. “Ta, mate.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ron replied. Then, after looking intently at his face, he added, “And Harry? Take some time off today, would you?”

Harry smirked. “Merlin knows I need it, with the hours Draco’s making me work.”

With long strides, he was out of the archives and headed for the cafeteria, never noticing Ron’s raised eyebrows at his casual mention of Malfoy’s first name.

* * *

 

Alice Winters spotted him from afar as soon as he’d entered the cafeteria and, with a brief nod to both him and Draco and an airy smile, she left. Harry walked to the small table in front of the counter, where his partner was busy staring a hole into his plastic coffee cup.

“Ask if that chair is vacant again and I’m going to throw it at your face,” Draco said, wearily.

Harry snorted and sat. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

They sat there for a few minutes, without making eye contact, the silence interrupted only by their heavy sighs. All around them, ministry employees were chattering happily with their friends and colleagues, their minds unconcerned with thoughts of drug dealers and long buried Potions Masters.

“That explanation you promised me? I’m still waiting for it,” Harry prompted.

Draco pressed his lips into a thin line – _‘clear sign of how stressed he_ _is’_ Harry thought, trying to blame the fact that he knew Malfoy’s body language enough to tell he was stressed on the fact that he was an excellent Auror; he hadn’t been staring at the man’s lips _that_ long, after all.

“I must admit that I thought you would forget, if I didn’t mention it again,” he replied, eventually.

“Clearly, you were wrong.”

“Clearly.”

More silence.

“So?”

“Do we have to do this here?”

Harry stood. “I hope you realise that I recognise an attempt at diversion when I see one, being an Auror and all, but I’ll humour you. No, we don’t have to do it here. I met Robards coming up from the archives. We have the rest of the day off. Come on, you can talk in my flat.”

Draco drained his cup, grimacing when the cold coffee hit his tongue, and followed him to the elevators.

* * *

 

Despite how much they’d bonded since they started working together, seeing Draco Malfoy pace nervously in his living room would never stop feeling _strange_.

“Do stop pacing and sit down, would you? You’re leaving a trail in my rug.”

After confirming with a glance that he’d really flattened down large sections of the fluffy, white rug that lay between Harry’s couch and his fireplace, Draco made his way to the armchair in front of him and let himself fall into it with little of his usual grace.

“You’re acting weird,” Harry started, “Weirder than usual. At first I thought it was just more of you being the slightly paranoid workaholic that you are, but you’re really starting to worry me, now. You’re not talking, so I reckon I’ll have to guess. It’s got something to do with Snape, obviously, because this started only after we saw his name on that register. And I know you were close to him-”

He was interrupted by what was probably meant to be a sarcastic snort, but had come out more like a pained hiss. “Oh, you know! What exactly is it that you know? You know how it feels like to have the name of a man I knew since birth, who’s been a friend of my family since before I can remember, dragged into the mud again? That the fact that his name’s involved into this will probably make me a suspect as well?”

Draco passed a trembling hand through his hair and met Harry’s gaze, his eyes rapidly filling, “I’m not usually this emotional,” he added, apologetically, “Especially not on the job. But he came up in the conversation so suddenly… I’m sorry. I’ve been all snappish and I acted odd in front of a witness. I was out of line and I know that…”

Harry didn’t know what to say. He remembered well enough the shock of having the name of a dead loved one violently shoved at him when he least expected it. When Sirius had died, every time someone brought him up would be agony. And if that wasn’t enough on its own, Draco was worried he’d be connected to the culprit! Of course he would be on edge, with all that raging through his mind…

He stood from the couch and sat down on the chair’s left arm-rest, so close to Draco that he could feel his warmth, wishing that was enough to at least comfort him a little.

“If anything, now I’m even more worried,” he said lightly, “I’m pretty sure this is… What? The fourth time I’ve heard you apologise today?”

When his joke was only met by a weak smile, he added, “You know, when my… my godfather died, I’d go ballistic whenever someone would mention him. I felt that I was stuck in this eternal tunnel of anger and pain and every time this happened, I got deeper into it.”

He had to stop and lick his lips, which had suddenly gone dry: thinking about Sirius still cut deep into him and talking about him to Draco Malfoy, of all people, was not something he’d ever expected to do.

“So what did you do? How did you make it stop hurting?”

The hoarse whisper in which those surprisingly vulnerable questions were spoken tugged at Harry’s heartstrings enough to make him grab a pale wrist tightly.

“I didn’t. But, despite how much of a cliché it may sound, I found out that talking about him helped; that dealing with all the bad stuff helped me to remember the good moments we had together. Maybe you should try talking about Snape, too.”

So Draco did and, once he’d started to talk, it seemed he’d never be able to stop: he told Harry of his childish fascination with his father’s quiet, sombre friend, who would come for dinner every once in a while; of his later admiration for his favourite Hogwarts’ teacher. He told Harry – and that’s where the tears and the angry sobs forced themselves out – of those days, during the war, when his father had been lost to alcohol and despair and his mother to the effort of keeping her sister from directing her fury on them all: Snape had been the only one who’d protect him and comfort him after he was tortured or forced to torture others. He told him of how he’d thrown up for days, after finding the mangled body in the Shrieking Shack.

Almost unconsciously, Harry slid to kneel on the floor, never loosening his grip on Draco’s wrist, and cupped a wet cheek in his left hand, pensively drying a tear with his thumb.

A startled _‘What am I doing?’_ did cross his mind, as he registered the perplexed expression on his partner’s crying face, but only for a second, before being drowned by the urge to _just stop him crying_.

He closed his eyes and licked his lips, dry once again. Then he placed them gently on Draco’s wet, quivering ones.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, my lovelies, let me know what you think, here or on [Tumblr](http://yesiliveinfandom.tumblr.com/ask)


	13. You like me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I know I'm a terrible person, but work was added in the mix of my already frankly weird life and this is the result. Tomorrow I've got to catch a plane and I have to wake up at five. I'm posting this around two am. I hope that makes up for it (and that you excuse any typos or mistakes due to that).   
> That said, enjoy!

Chapter 12.

 

Wet.

In the total darkness, with his eyes still closed, that was the first sensation he felt.

Quite ironically, he thought, while he kept moving his lips slowly against Draco’s, it reminded him of his very first kiss with Cho Chag. Almost immediately, though, he realised that, despite the fact that both had been crying, the similarities pretty much ended there. Where Cho’s body had been all soft, pliant curves, Draco’s was hard planes and pointy angles; where her lips had been plump and smooth, his were thin and slightly chapped from biting on them too much. And still. So very still.

_‘What am I doing? What am I doing? What?’_

Just when he was about to step back and apologise, Draco opened his mouth a little and started kissing back.

Had Harry thought his lips were a bit _too_ hard? Maybe. But, boy, had he been wrong. Lost his initial surprise, he kissed back sweetly and softly, all fluttering caresses. The hand that Harry wasn’t holding, previously fisted on the chair’s arm-rest, moved to Harry’s shoulder first, then to stroke his hair.

Harry, in turn, squeezed his other hand and cupped the back of his head. He could feel the fine hair on his nape under the pads of his fingers, taste the salt of his tears, smell the freshness of his aftershave…

For what felt like hours they kissed, gently, chastely, more a reassurance and a comforting touch than a cry of passion, both trying to soothe the other’s sorrow. As if they were in a bubble of space and time, they felt completely isolated from the rest of the world and, eventually, from the ghosts that still haunted them. Gradually, Draco’s sobs came to a stop, replaced by shaking breaths and then by peaceful sighs.

Only then did Harry realise that he was still kneeling on the hard, wooden floor, in a _very_ uncomfortable position and, worst of all, he had no idea what to say next.

He was saved by Draco, looking confused and unconsciously licking his lips ( _which made Harry want to snog him all over again, dammit!_ ), who asked, “What was that, exactly?”

“Erm… a kiss?”

And oh, the reaction to that was that Malfoy’s patented ‘you-don’t-say’ look, complete with only one raised eyebrow and, seriously, he wasn’t supposed to find that so sexy, but _bloody hell_ , he just did.

“Okay, sorry, I mean that… I really like you,” he said. And he _meant_ that. He had already abandoned Ron’s plan when he’d found out Malfoy was an all right bloke, if you just gave him a chance. Why couldn’t he have this too? His hands in his hair, his smell in his nose, his lips on his own. “I know my timing wasn’t the best, probably, but I wanted to comfort you so bad I just didn’t think, I guess.”

_Merlin. He wanted Draco Malfoy. When had that become his life?!_

Draco gave a little snort. “How is you not thinking a new thing?”

His smile was genuine, if still a little sad. Harry saw one last tear that had been caught on the long, blond eyelashes, fall and run down his cheek. Before he had even realised he was moving, he’d caught it with his lips and he had leaned in to kiss Draco again.

This time he didn’t have to wait for a response. He had almost let himself get lost in the kiss, deeper now, but still so sweet, when a sudden thought made him stop and push Draco away.

“Merlin, I’m sorry, I didn’t even ask if this was okay,” he said, panting slightly.

“Of course,” started Draco,”Of course it is,” and then, as an afterthought, “You … like me?”

His tone raised a little with the question, almost as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Absently, he licked his lips again. With a frankly _heroic_ effort, Harry ignored his impulse to just go for it and thought of how difficult it would have been for the perfect Draco Malfoy to show such vulnerability twice in one day.

“Of course,” he repeated, smiling “I really do. Whatever the Prophet may say about my dating habits, I don’t actually kiss anybody who’s handy.”

They both cracked a grin at that. No one would ever let Harry forget about headlines such as “The Boy Who’s Randy” or, on one memorable occasion he’d been photographed leaving Oliver Wood’s apartment one morning, “The Boy Who Shags and his Morning Wood”. Courtesy of Rita Skeeter, obviously.

“Isn’t it weird, though?” Draco asked.

“Why, you don’t like me back? Because, I admit, in that case it might get awkward.”

A sigh, followed by a delicious little flush. “I’m afraid I might like you too much for my own sanity.

The thing Harry felt in his guts at those words was probably illegal.

“Let’s go out together, then. Properly. When this is over,” he said.

“We’ll see, if you’ve not driven me crazy, by then,” smirked Draco.

* * *

 

After a few minutes of witty banter and several more of snogging, sprawled in a tangle of limbs on the couch – any position, really, that didn’t involve Harry kneeling on the floor for ages – Draco lay his head on his shoulder. Probably worn out by the stress of the last few days and the excitement of the previous hours, he promptly fell into a doze.

Harry looked fondly at the blond hair falling on his eyes. He looked so young when he wasn’t frowning! Not quite the pointy, annoying fifteen year old he’d been, but… softer somehow. His inner voice, the one that sort of sounded like Ron, was roaring with laughter at his waxing poetic about his old school nemesis. If he’d thought even in passing, that sometime in the future he would have enjoyed cuddling with Malfoy this much, he would have admitted himself in the Janus Thickey Ward and started playing bridge with Lockheart.

Whatever it was, though, that warm, protective feeling in his chest, it was _real_ and new. A bit scary, maybe. There were so many things that could go wrong between them, starting from personality clashes and ending, quite spectacularly, with the fact that Harry had agreed to break Draco’s heart as a joke.

He should tell him. He would. But, he thought, looking at the slow, relaxed breathing of his partner, _‘Not today.’_

He fell into a light sleep himself and woke up to Draco’s stirring in the late afternoon.

“Mmm… I fell asleep on you,” Draco mumbled, rubbing his eyes and groaning, “Oh, Merlin, you must be rubbing off on me, I’m starting to state the obvious!”

Harry laughed and didn’t waste his opportunity to place another kiss on his lips, tasting the other’s smile with his tongue.

“Let’s have some supper and then get to a proper bed, alright, funny man?”

A weird, uncertain grin and a tiny blush appeared on Draco’s face.

“Okay, that came out flirtier than I meant to. Although I’d like you to notice that I still offered dinner first, even when I didn’t mean to ask for sex.”

The blush intensified – if asked, Draco would have blamed his fair complexion and the heating in Harry’s apartment - but the grin stayed in place. His hair was flattened on the side he’d leaned on Harry’s shoulder and his lips were still rosy from all the snogging. He was gorgeous.

Harry had been tenderly tucking a lock of blond hair behind Draco’s ear when he saw him pull a face and pinch the bridge of his nose.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s Wednesday,” said Draco with a sigh, “I forgot that today I’ve got my weekly dinner with Mother.”

Harry tried not to let his disappointment show. Since when was he the clingy type?

“It’s alright,” he smiled, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Just… if something makes you react badly at work-“

“It won’t happen again,” Draco replied swiftly.

“Let me finish. I meant to say that it’s normal. This is a high stress job – strictly speaking it’s not even _your_ job… Just, talk to me if something happens, okay? I’ll listen.”

Draco closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then, his eyes still closed, he stepped into Harry’s arms. “Thank you,” he whispered in his ear, planting a small kiss on his neck, right below the jaw, that, despite its innocence, had Harry take in a shuddering breath.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, moving to the Floo Powder pot next to the hearth.

Harry grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, giving him a slow, deep kiss that left them both flustered.

“You forgot your goodnight kiss.”

“You’re such a sap,” laughed Draco, “And so entitled. I let you kiss me a few times and it’s like you suddenly own my mouth.”

That would have had a much greater impact, had he not said the entire sentence in between short, sweet presses of lips.

“Go, you hypocrite, before I keep you here and we’ve got to explain to your mum why you missed your dinner together.”

With a grin, Draco turned, picked up a handful of Floo Powder and with a clear, ringing, “Malfoy Manor!” he was gone in a flurry of green flames.

Stretching, Harry went to the kitchen to make dinner himself, not wanting to disturb Kreacher, who, as a favour to him, worked at Hogwarts whenever he wasn’t needed – which is to say, most of the time.

He ate in front of the telly, wondering what Draco would have to say about that. Would he criticise it as a nasty habit? Would he be intrigued as Ron had been by the mysterious talking box? Had he ever heard of a television before? He decided to ask, the next day. He’d probably get the tight-lipped, disapproving look that silently screamed ‘Unprofessional!’ but he’d live with it. He wondered, grinning like a loon, if he’d be able to kiss the scowl away…

Ah! Draco had been right, he _was_ a sap.

Not being able to stop thinking about him, he resolved to go to bed early. Little did he know that he would also dream of Draco and that the dream would be considerably less innocent than the afternoon they had spent together.

* * *

 

Facing him the next morning harder than he’d expected. On the contrary, the reaction of disapproval towards showing their new intimacy while at work was exactly the one he had been expecting. He’d barely moved a step too close, when he met a frown and a glare that, somehow, managed to look both embarrassed and haughty at the same time. Oh, the fun he’d have, trying to make that pale face blush!

His devious plans, though, were nipped in the bud. No sooner had they finished their lunch than Ron, followed a few steps behind by Winters, made his way through the canteen to reach them in wide strides.

“Harry, Malfoy,” he said, with a triumphant grin, “We’ve got a possible match.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, in the next chapter the plot will thicken. In this one... I tried, but they wanted to do nothing but snog.   
> (Yes the characters have a mind of their own, deal with it.)  
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
